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Aces the European Union Center of Excellence

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Aces the European Union Center of Excellence ACES THE EUROPEAN UNION CENTER OF EXCELLENCE AUGUST2009 The Italian Parliament and the EU: a slow and gradual Europeanization Federiga Bindi (· ' I The Italian Parliament and the EU: a slow and gradual Europeanization Federiga Bindi In this paper we discussed how the literature traces a growing involvement of the national parliaments in EU policy-making. Three phases can be distinguished: limited or no involvement was the trend nntil the 1980s; after the Single Act (SEA, 1987), national parliaments started to be interested in European affairs and to set up specialized committees; following the Maastricht Treaty (TUE, 1992), the involvement of national parliaments in EU affairs became a response to the question of"democratic deficit" in the EU (Norton, 1995). The growing number of policies dealt with at the EU level, the consequently increased influence ofEU law in nationallegislations, the new powers of the Union: all of these worked together to push national legislators to seek a scrutiny role in the drafting of EU legislation. According to Laprat (1995: I), once the TUE was formally approved, a more parliamentary climate prevailed. In more recent years, national parliaments have distinguished themselves for their increased role in the scrutiny of EU legislation (Raunio and Hix, 200I: !52); more specialized MPs sit in the committees on EU affairs; the amount of work for EU specialists has increased. Also, parliamentary scrutiny, initially only optional and ex post, is now increasingly ex ante and/or mandatory (Maurer and Wessels, 200I: 425-475). Also, though national parliaments are not mentioned in the first ten paraconstitutional articles of the TUE, they are now the object of various specific Declarations and Protocols: Declaration 13 and I 4, attached to the Maastricht Treaty, and most of the Protocol on the 2 Role ofNational Parliaments, attached to the Amsterdam Treaty (1996), focus on the role of national parliaments. According to the Protocol, for example, national governments agree to send to their parliaments all Commission documents and legislative proposals. The Treaty establishing a European Constitution, in a new Protocol, leaves it up to the Commission, when it sends its proposals to the national governments, whether to send them to the national parliaments, too. Should one third of the parliaments oppose this proposal, however, it will have to be re-examined. The new Treaty **** As we shall see, the Italian parliament fits into this general trend quite well. However- oddly in a perfectly bicameral system - there is a marked discrepancy between the two chambers, as well as a persistent gap between what is done on paper and what is done in practice. Basic features of the Italian political system The 1948 Constitution of the Italian Republic- written and approved in December 1947, after the fascist period- is a long (139 articles), rigid, programmatic text. It is the result of many compromises, all aimed at reuniting the country despite its many cleavages. Italian society was - and still is - a pluralist one, and the Constitution reflects that. Indeed, the Constitution was not the result of a comprehensive and harmonic agreement, but rather of a number of partial agreements among ideologically distant political forces (Di Palma, 1977). Nevertheless, in most areas and specifically as regards the form of government, the Constitution essentially represented an agreement between the Communist Party (PCI) and the Christian Democrats (DC) to impose their will on all the others. Leaders chose to opt for a parliamentary system rather than a presidential one for this reason. A strong executive was in 3 fact perceived by many constituent fathers as risky for the newborn democratic system. The ( ) Italian check and balance system, as it were, is granted by the primacy of the parliament vis-a­ vis the executive; the latter's work can be scrutinized and eventually vetoed at any time by the parliament (De Micheli and Verzichelli, 2004: 77). In particular, the political parties were to play the central role in the democratic game: in the minds of the founding fathers of the Italian Republic, the system would in fact work because of the strength and the authority injected from outside by the parties. This started during the end of the War. As the Allies began their invasion in July 1943, the German troops occupied the main strategic points of central and northern Italy, including Rome. To escape the Nazi penetration, the Badoglio government and royal family took refuge in Brindisi. In doing so, the government and the king left the nation in complete turmoil. In the absence of any legitimate authority to govern, the political parties made their re-entrance into the political arena. Together, they formed the National Liberation Committee (CLN). The CLN did not benefit institutionally from any governing prerogative, yet it filled. the power vacuum: it was the only visible and recognized authority, and it set about confronting the numerous problems the country faced. The parties nominated the political and administrative authorities of the municipalities, so that they could take care of public services. Thus, the CLN got into the habit of nominating its members to take charge of the public administration when nobody else was in a position to do so: the so-called "lottizzazione" began in that period (Amato, 1993). Today, not only are the parties involved in policy-making, but they also play the role of gate­ keepers from both a political and a socio-economical point of view (Morlino, 1991). They appoint the ministers, they decide upon undersecretaries, and they choose chairmen and members of the boards of any public company or important public body - including the top executives of public departments, as we shall also see in Chapter 5 (Amato, 1993). The centrality of the parties, together with the choice to adopt a pure proportional electoral law, 4 ended up opening the doors to what is known as partitocrazia: that is, the rule and the supremacy of the parties. It also encouraged a continuous negotiation between the ruling majority and the opposition rather than direct confrontation (De Micheli and Verzichelli, 2004). The Italian parliament is thus "a highly polycentric institution not easily amenable to majoritarian decisions and to firm leadership by the Cabinet" (Cotta, 1990: 76). The legislature is based on equal bicameralism, the Senate (Upper House) and the Chamber of Deputies (Lower House) performing identical functions and sharing the legislative power (art. 70 Italian Constitution). It has a committee-centered structure and is, in many ways, a "working parliament". In particular, vertical committees are empowered, under certain conditions, to adopt laws without a vote in the plenary. Parliamentary procedures also assign a marginal role to the government in parliamentary works. On the other hand, opportunities for individual deputies and minor groups to influence the agenda and/or the legislative process are maximized by a prevailing "consociational" inspiration. All this tends to shape a recognizable organizational and procedural model whereby the parliament acts as a legislator and neglects control and scrutiny functions (Cotta, 1996: 79-91). In the beginning, this was meant to reduce confrontation and involve opposition parties in the democratic system. Over the years, however, it has weakened the parliament's performance and reduced its effectiveness. The Italian party system between the First and Second Republic 5 The Italian party system has been, and to a certain extent still is, a peculiar case among Western democracies. Unfortunately, in many ways, Joseph Di Palma's (1977) and Joe LaPalombara's (1964) classic works on Italy remain valid even today. And when Leonardo Morlino (1998: 250) compares the Italian and the Spanish cases, for instance, he fmds that the democratic regime in Spain has succeeded in becoming comparatively more consolidated than in Italy. In the postcwar period, the Italian parties developed along the lines of at least two different models. The Christian Democrats (DC) emerged as a confessional or denominational party, very close to the catch-all party model. The communist PCI, in contrast, became the classic party of mass integration. The Socialists (PSI) attempted to imitate the PCI, albeit with limited success. A similar mass party model was adopted by the neofascist Movimento Sociale Jtaliano (MSI). On the contrary, the Liberals (PLI) and Republicans (PRJ) could be regarded as opinion parties and, at the same time, elite parties. Giuseppe Saragats' Social Democrats (PSDI) occupied an intermediate position between the mass party and the party of notables (Morlino, 1998, 18 I). The electoral system that was initially chosen for the new republic - and that lasted until the early I 990s - was a proportional system. This helped create a very fragmented, unstable party system, with at least eight national parties represented in parliament at any given time. The Republic had over 50 Cabinets between I 948 and the early I 990s.: they were all rather large and unstable, supported for most of the post-war period by four/five-party coalitions (the so­ called pentapartito ). Coalition governments normally included the DC, PLI, PRI, PSDI, and, since the early 1960s, PSI. As long as the possibility of a government including the PC! was perceived as risky, the DC played the role of the ruling party, granting stability to the system (Sartori, 1998, 61-62). Jean Paul Frognier (1991: 77-85; 92-93), for example, showed how 6 governmental instability was counterbalanced by the existence of a pivotal group of 16 ministers who were present in most governments. Yet, while that allowed the democratic system to survive, it also cost a lot in terms of efficiency (Di Pahna, 1977). It led to an incoherent legislative pattern characterized by an overflow of insignificant laws, known in Italian as leggine (little laws) (De Micheli and Verzichelli, 2004: 95). This blocked political situation - which characterized Italy in its first 40 years of history as a republic - first began to be challenged in the early 1990s.
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